What Could You Possibly Expect?
by PopShop
Summary: Because not all wounds can be healed by a flicker of magick. Fran discovers how a hume heart breaks. -Oneshot-


Ay Ay Ay. Done. Eventually. Don't own FFXII or IAMX. Also, can you imagine how hard that game would have been with 'Raise'?

* * *

_And i'll follow any truth._

_I won't let you go._

_I want every tomorrow._

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Her muscles ache and burn, her skin a cut line dictionary, evidence of close kisses with cold steel. Blood seeping into her eyes, her surroundings tainted a lingering shade of berserk. Sharp shadows cut and conceal, her entire world a study of masterpieces, smudges of green and grey, fingerprints in darkness.

Crimson scratched through her vision, brief flashes of vicious colour providing sad substitute for fond memories, escapism, for the endless blue, the soft safety of stretching sky, faint smears of angel's wings along the horizon. The mechanical whine of the Strahl singing symphony in her ears, the feeling of control beating against her fingertips.

The inky warmth pools in her palm, a wide red smile carved through her shoulder spilling its honest weakness in glinting red trails along her arm. Noise bleeds through the violent hum, barely audible above the rushing sound of her heartbeat in her ears.

These people, detached voices of dying volume, sounding of suffocation, of sedatives, their cries still laced with enthusiasm, optimism.

A Hume's stupidity.

Like maybe they'll survive this, blood stain kisses along their cheeks, and they're saying, '_Yeah, we can do this_,' she hears, '_Vaan, watch it_,' whispered warnings of, '_He's down_'. She hears her name in broken prayer, but the woods remain ignorant to her pleas, this voice sounds like the beat of butterfly wings and Penelo's confused sense of salvation.

Such misplaced trust in the future.

They are mere flashes in history, brief and beautiful, and they still try to tear the world apart with their tiny hume hands, porcelain bones beneath paper skin. She hears their hectic thoughts simultaneously, each boasting a point to prove, their battleground paths to redemption. Their emotions pump acid through their veins, making them violent, romantic, a blur of the brightest, boldest kind, all those strong sentiments that make them lose their minds.

Devastation and determination.

They are unpredictable, wild and hungry, so explosive and bright, so fleeting. Makes her think of shooting stars, of gunfire. These amazing creations that bloom, wilt and die in their repetitive cycles. She sees the sequence many times within her lifespan.

For her, death has lost its significance.

She has captured the world in her mind's eye, knows this is pointless, irrelevant. Blood-shed and high risks, tales of personal sacrifice, of morals and dignity, and they may save this world, but the legends of the next will forget them.

And yet she tightens her fist, bleach white bone exploding through the torn fabric of skin across her knuckles, the feel of metal and crusted gore along the line of her palm almost reassuring, her head pounding with noise of warnings and war cries and beneath it all her own inner demons pulling her intimate secrets apart, '_Don't you want to die here? You'll outlive them all-_' but she's blurring the words with the sound of her own ragged screaming, raw energy tearing through her throat, and she can taste blood and absolute hopelessness on her lips.

Vaan is absolute potential in the sickly ambiance. Naïve and neglectful, the shadow vines throw streaks across his blood-stained complexion, sketch dark strips of war-paint along his too-young face. He is confident, everything from his stance, to his words. Mad to live; mad to die, his own voice echoing beyond his childish ambition, '_This will always be just a fight to the death_'.

He smiles his faux bravery because they expect it of him, a bright display of the stupid innocence he has long since lost. They are adults, sophisticated and serious, discussing politics and war through clenched teeth and tighter fists. They need his flickering grin, laughable statements, innocent lines of '_Like they could beat us_', golden words that glimmer, but flake away. They sound like angel song falling from his lips, but they collapse into dirt, shatter and mean nothing to anyone.

Through the thick heat, his eyes too wide to catch in a single glance, he is always eager, always charging, like this world won't wait for him. '_I am worth this_'.

He fights pumping pure adrenaline, no skill, just a wronged teenager, violent and merciless and always asking, demanding '_why should I?_' Quick feet and slick hands, his motions almost romantic in his devotion, absolute dedication to his butchery.

His pain gradually bleeds through the comforting silence she fills her mind with, his anxiety is tangible. He is by her left, by her right, a flurry of destruction sounding out all around her, maybe he's asking if she is okay, telling her to step back, his palm pressing against her arm, slick and warm and not like he should feel, bone fragments splintering in the twists and twirls of the spirals lining his skin.

She closes her eyes against the straining muscles of his back, because he is young and impressionable, and how easily they lead him to temptation.

The exaggerated sweep of long lashes brushing the images away, and she is slow motion, the world spinning rapid and violent around her. She hears her name, in so many tones and shades, hears the princess lose her footing, hears the pirate lose his patience, and collectively, they do not have the dignity to spare, but they offer it regardless.

Penelo, more heart than hell, practising escape over engage, her heavy breathing close by, her voice hoarse, gasping around '_please stop this_'. Darling Penelo, honey and soft, cheeks still tainted rose, she does not look whole without the sun on her skin. She belongs to the Rabanastre streets, her etiquette useless out beyond the wild trees where the shadows line their grins with razor blade teeth.

But she is strong, untouchable, her heart lying in all the wrong places, captivated by the bright eyes of a boy destined to die.

Her tiny hands of blown glass clutching tight her bow, and she won't shake or shiver, for these brief moments, violence spitting red flecks across her face, she is a trained killer. She is a ruined masterpiece; they've torn through her with their lines of struggle and anguish. Her disfigured smile a testament to her youth they've destroyed.

Through the snap and shift of splintering bone, the brilliance of their brutal barbarianism, the princess is still a portrait of her lineage, elegant and graceful, her sword swing a rainbow arch composed entirely of vicious red hues. She presses her teeth into perfect prison rows, effectively trapping the primitive screeches of what she really needs to say. Fine lines of thorn and thread tearing the ashen skin of her cheek, and they may wrap her in gold and silk, set jewels along her knuckles, but to these witnesses she will always be explosive, a disturbance throughout the heaving silence of the jungle.

Always moving and spinning and bleeding, immeasurable rage and survival instinct.

Her pretty face spoiled by the lurking shadows of her husband's memory hidden in plain sight.

Basch is beyond her, bathing in the bloodshed, slipping back through past lives, moving with the practised ease of a once proud knight. His face a carving in dirt and stone, lines of scar tissue boasting the consequences of every decision he has ever made.

He keeps an eye on the princess, studies the shifting shades of madness colouring her eyes. Through her veins pumps precious metal, her face a pale portrait of nobility, but she is still a child, no different to Vaan, still fighting and struggling for lives beyond saving. Childish and vengeful, she threads ballet footsteps along the hazy line between, Lord Rasler's name on her lips, her private dirge she sings through the gasping breaths of illness and injury.

Her mental descent is briefly witnessed between the cut and curve of her blade's swing, and there's red seeping into his vision, her carved curves blurring into the hazy green shades of shadow and silence. And through the momentum of his own blind obedience, he glimpses the crumpled figure beyond the arch of their destruction, and suddenly this is far more serious than practise shots on foreign terrain.

Viera ears catch his fragile, heavy-breath words before they crumble on the moss-soft blankets lain beneath them. He barely speaks out above a whisper, he is a wise man, observant of a hume's dependant nature, does not intend to set alarm bells ringing, frantic voices howling and yelling above the already deafening silence. Those fine flickers of breath caught on the breeze form words and warnings, sounding like war cries, like last rights, and across the jungle's thick-vine carpet, the captain's face betrays little urgency, faint traces of anxiety across his brow.

Her feet carry her faster, further than words ever could

'Balthier!?'

His name does not seem to fit language momentarily and she's blinking blind against shadow twisting and twirling in her peripheral.

She hears vague echoes of her sister's words; they are beyond pleading, dignified and vague in every syllable. Jote spinning whispered prose that sound like '_recommend_' and '_unwise_', thoroughly unimpressed, she's framing, '_Sister, your common sense has abandoned you_,' with grinding teeth and wild eyes

This pirate, he has fallen from the sky, broken his wings, shattered and ethereal, scratches of platinum blonde and dessert storms impressed across his liar's eyes. Vaan's named carved in the callous lines of his palms.

The god's lay this insult of an angel across vine-choked alters, they pull the gold-leaf feathers from his wings through '_he loves you, he loves you not_'s.

She watches his lips move in whispers of words she should never care to understand, and she'd catch them, cup them within the ruined skin of her hands if it meant sparing him their honesty. He should not hear his silver tongue betray his careful character like this. She heeds them all, sounding like the heavy collision of fists on skin and this is not the ending he envisioned, this is not so epic, no magnificent display of martyrdom. Forest vines stealing him to their green-hued shadows. And he will be forgotten to the darker corners of this jungle maze where hume's fail to tread.

For now, their stories are hidden within the suffocating grip of the jungle flora, songs and secrets they shall tell when they set eyes upon the sky once more. His halo of twisted roots, stray petals of dying flowers abandoned along the lonely pathways, the soothing fingers of gloom curling comfort along his chest.

Forgotten. A sacrifice unrecognised, an amusing secret the leaves will whisper through gentle winds, nearby flowers stained crimson. It is not the ending for which he had hoped, the gunfire falls silent now, but it is the ending he rightly deserves.

She watches his body shiver and sever, fierce red eyes swallow this scene whole, she cannot fight against the hume habits that crawl along the notches of her spine. She hears '_loss_' and '_love_', nothing more than words of wanting. Ghosts in uncharted territory.

Her heart whispering fevered words of counsel, she cannot touch him, she is not so strong in her self-sufficiency. She would cradle him; suck his bitter-blood breath through her lungs until the motions stop. Until his chest cavity collapses, caves.

His fingers knot and twist, crack and shatter, involuntary contraction-expansion smothering the sounds of each golden breath he's sucking through clenched teeth, lips that falter and flicker between smiling, amid several emotions she cannot relate too. He resorts to Vaan's techniques, smoothing over the sharp-tooth agony with sunbeam smiles. The result a dazzling display of personal defiance, but he cannot seem to filter the agony from his heavy gasps, and he'd call to her if he could sooth the screams building behind his teeth.

Basch is flaring protective streaks, a heavy arm curled tight around Penelo's angel wing anatomy, his lips a flurry of consequential words and vague explanation, and she's staring into nowhere - inside her head, fingernails scratching frantically at the nightmares he paints along the lines of her eyelids.

He's saying, '_take Vaan away from here'_ but she's hearing, '_he should not see this._' Proof of a scene worth capturing the orphan-boy from. Because everything is coloured deathly, and brief moments of fleeting expression, hush hush words of demands wrapped in suggestions, this all seems like part of another hastily written epilogue.

She thinks maybe she hears the sky crying, knows the gods no longer smile upon them beneath the spindly fingers of nature's possessive flare. She's counting the tiny creases framing his eyes, the tilt to his brow, realising he's aged decades within this flash storm of seconds. They've deviated far from their tall tales and Basch's careful indifference melts away under pressure, the heat of stress, his eyes a magnet for each emotional disaster.

'_I will follow you. You must find safety_,' each word punctuated by the sounds of scurrying feet - the scratch-drag of predatory footsteps - of mighty roars, of shrieks bleeding from within the twisted silhouettes of the jungle.

He's fading into updrafts before she finds her voice and Vaan is heat in her head, sandpaper skin burning away at nerve endings and skin cells and he has no idea what he does to her.

He's shaking his head in that lonely way, aggression and acceptance, saying, '_We're not leaving_', his heart hammering along the angles of his throat, clawing it's way into his skull and he cannot hear logical reason above the reverberation of it's rage.

His wonder-boy eyes promise disaster, but she's clutching his hand between her own, guiding him with soft skin, softer words, she's spinning golden thread cotton wool to protect the battered boy he is beneath the menace and the misery. She's humming to a beat to sooth his heart, whispering, '_Basch said_' because that is enough to convince him of the justice in his abandonment. Because to him, Basch is a collection of words carved in stone by the gods, because momentarily, Reks is the vague, eerie foundation of a nightmare he cannot recall. While Balthier struggles to shape his tongue around truths, because the skies are his playground and he was free, and honesty was considered a major character flaw for a pirate, albeit a hard one to isolate amongst the ever increasing list.

Balthier, Balthier, Balthier but she presses her lips shut, Vaan is awkward and comfort pressed beneath her shivering palms. But she is racing to the rhythm of his frantic heart, daylight bleeding its cut-throat beams through the fluttering leaves; branches twist and shrink to its will. She's ready to say, '_keep running_', she needs to see the sky again, she begs proof it does not cry for them.

For they will not lose their friend today.

Vaan _should not_ see this.

The Princess catches glimpse of Fran through the spotlight of glinting blades and flashing teeth. A carved ebony statue looming by the corners of their chaos. Fran, born of such a delicate, solitary race, displays the skilled violence of one tainted by Balthier's wandering hands. She kisses gilded weaponry and the crumbling concrete of the empire, unaware of his dirty, childish fingerprints dotted across the bridge of her nose, his heated breath along her jaw. She fights their battles because she views it as practical. Balthier's words falling from Viera lips saying, '_Destruction is simple, a fresh beginning. A definite. Construction is a variable_'.

Only in these spotlight situations does she pull honesty from his mastery of his language.

Some things need to die.

Destruction is natural, and his body is dying all around him.

Ashe catches glimpse the fallen pirate through razor sharp eyes, by his side in a breeze of light breath, air choked by the scent of Galbana lilies. The princess crumbles to her knees, the musical clatter of armour accompanying her collapse. Her hands ghostly white shades of holy, blurry and brilliant through the shadow. Touching fingertips to green-hued lips, against his throat, her composure slowly slipping, her noble mask cracking.

She's pressing pearl white palms against his chest and cheeks, searching for an injury, an entry wound, and there is blood everywhere, its pooling beneath her fingernails and this is embarrassingly intimate, Fran physically feet from them, her mind millions of miles away. She'll call his name until it loses meaning, until long after his heart surrenders. The sky pirate stealing himself away beneath her trembling fingertips, his eyelids flickering tell-tale signs of worse to come, and she's pleading, '_Fran? Fran!_' curling fingers into the dips of bone saying, '_I don't know what to do anymore_'.

The Viera is entirely trapped in her own mind, mazes of blank walls and white noise memories. She's mapping the details of his face, each point of pain and panic. His pin-prick pupils, his pulse rocketing riot against the soft skin of his throat, she catches it like battle through her trained ears. A picture perfect study of disfigurement, the quirk of his lip, his hand almost entirely severed, a skin-pulped mess, and the princess steps away in defeat, in anger and fear, and there's apologies on her lips, her comforting mantra sing-song of, '_I can't help you. I can't_,' and there's another one dying before her eyes, and suddenly Rasler is a stranger's face in a backlog of memory.

Fran traces the lines of agony etched into his young-boy face with a fingernail, her hands spreading and coiling around his throat, she can almost taste the poison pumping vicious through his veins, his body in near convulsions she's saying, 'perhaps you have kept your eyes on the sky for too long, pirate.'

_You have let the world pass you by._

She's leaning close to catch the final breaths, the faint gold-dust he's breathing. She remembers him as a boy, guarded and eloquent, fleeting and fascinating, he had not yet grown his wings, but he was not meant for this world.

_Never._

A partnership based on escapism, on destruction and simplicity. And she often fell obedient to his gold-leaf plans because this wonder-child did not believe in words such as '_impossible_', '_unlikely_'. He was a master of verbal expression, often emphasised the lack of interpretation the negative seemed to hold within his head. But now, without his verbal arsenal packed solid between his teeth, he is no longer so beautiful, no longer so different from the many who have died before him.

And she briefly entertains the idea that Viera hearts are carved from steel stronger than any blade. Cursed by longevity, inevitably to bear witness to those who could not match them for years. She thinks maybe it's why the forest holds them so close; protecting them from loss and love, plot points of experience capable of destroying their peaceful natures.

With his heart hammering warnings beneath her fingertips, a dull throb against her skin, she thinks maybe she should kiss him. Hears echoes of his words from when his self-control was but a tiny voice in his ear, drowned out by teenage impulse and petty dreaming. '_Fran please, we would never work. You taste like an ending._'

He is drained now, his face tainted sickly shades of pastels, his vibrancy bleeding through open wounds. Blood and filth, and she thinks this is the most honest he's ever been. This is the boy she followed to the skies, with his wide eyes and his big hopes, dreams so excessive he could not control their wonder-words behind his awkward teen grin. She had asked him in her smooth tones, what passion had brought such a light to his face, and he had curled fingers in his hair, and laughed, had claimed words would lay waste to the fairytales his dreams had spoke of.

But childish romantics soon vanished and hazed along with direction and necessity, and he was adrift once again, dreamless and bland, nursing a stronger understanding of those words he once could not utilize.

Now he uses them all too readily, disguising his thoughts with flowery words and half-bitter grins. Now, he is spread like a broken angel, shattered mechanics and she sees his wants, his passions resurfacing.

His desire for survival.

Strong and honest, and through her eyes, he is a child once more.

The details of their first encounter blur through her panicked past-reaching, she recalls a dark-alley smile, liquor-laced words lining the lips of a boy far beyond his depth.

Exactly where he wanted to be.

He spoke golden-lure words of freedom and stretching skies, enamoured with hopes and dreams. Glitter-white teeth proved his worst weapon, using them to frame the offers she needed to hear. A voice like Paramina snowdrifts.

Through her vague memories she recalls the self-indulgent sensation of hearing his heart slamming in its finger-bone cage, his rapid breathing, the brief flash of recovery following their first heist. His first black mark. And she had asked, curiosity picking away at her bones, as to why he had insisted on tarnishing his family's proud name with the gil-stained fingerprints of a pirate, and he was too young for his eyes to darken as they did, she asked, struggling to understand, '_What have you to gain from this?_' And days later, when he assumed perhaps she had forgotten, through a forced smile, teeth grinding so loud she struggled to pick the musical notes of his voice form between, he said, '_It's not about 'gain'. It's about loss._' Losing time and energy, past-selves and bad memories. _Ffamran_. Shadows of history he could never quite outrun.

A feral growl escapes the tiny gaps between teeth and lips, his body a bow-shaped arc of locked bones, muscles deteriorating beneath silver-sheen skin. Wild eyes flash across her face through a glossy daze. Her features melting away, the world viewed in sharp lines, blocks of colour.

She is black and white, she is yes and no, honest and brutal and there is nothing left unsaid. Red streaks in his spinning wonder-world the only hint of her thoughts.

She's pressing her palms against his throat, her fingernails tearing through his soaked-paper skin, and she is breaking bones for broken promises, whispering in her lullaby tones, voice sounding like songs and sighing and screaming, '_You promised_'. Promises of open skies and freedom. He promised he'd stay until the ending, until _her_ ending.

She feels the delicate curve of his collar bone snap and splinter beneath the berserker intentions of her pressing thumbs, watching the lightening flicker along his skin, his body heaves, scared-boy eyes lining on her once more and this time, he screams for everything. For misfortunes, martyrdom and madness, a screamed apology for the lies he builds safely around himself. And there is no clever charm, no quick wits to hide the urgency of this. Of everything and anything. He'd throw his hands up and laugh, but everything is starting to seem pointless and just maybe, he thinks, maybe he'll die here.

Vaan's worlds-away voice still echoes tenfold inside her head, she's repeating his golden words for lack of better to share. '_We need to turn back_'. Vaan in all his childish enthusiasm, reckless attempts at decency, decent attempts at recklessness. That boy could save their crumbling world armed with obnoxiousness and obscene stupidity. Penelo spinning woollen words off her sharp tongue, wrapping him in something familiar, easing his edge.

Basch's hand presses firm against her shoulder, his skin a tell-tale story spelled with criss-cross wounds, twilight shades of mauve across his knuckles. A complicated chorus of deep breaths like he's found something worth saying, but it all sounds like silence.

Balthier's wilting pleas coil in her ears, and she thinks maybe she's enraptured by this new side, weak and vulnerable and childish in all the ways he tries to disassociate himself with. Fleeting and fascinating, an accurate depiction of the life those wounded sounds represent.

The princess calls to her, a daylight halo framing white-blonde strands and her name sounds obscene, a curse they spit all too willingly, sounds like the grudges of unanswered prayers.

Basch is saying '_we leave now_', fingertips pressing to punctuate his command along the line of her shoulder, heavy undertones of panic painting his face an unnatural shade of pale. Balthier's eyes blinking rapid, the heavy scratch of his eyelids, his teeth lined with the toxic mixture of blood and bile pooling beneath his tongue. He's struggling for breath around, '_Please don't leave me here_', and in her manufactured distractions she hears, '_please_' and claws tighten their grip on his throat.

He is beyond saving, and she'll snap his neck beneath her elegant hands, because his weakness is intimate, a display for close friends. For her. And she suddenly thinks greed does not feel so unfamiliar. The Red-eyes lining tree-shadows are not entitled to this.

The princess loses her intricate detail as her silhouette fades into daylight, the suns rays coiling around her, smothering her voice until the Viera struggles to separate the broad and slender of the English language. Basch pulling her forcefully to her feet, and neon tinted eyes of the forest fauna creep closer, their footsteps sounding like gun-shots. She's stepping away, the crackle-snap of dry leaves and broken twigs the only voices this forest will lend her. She's watching his lips move in motions of silent prayer, too late to tell him the god's fall deaf to his cries. She sees apologies, his father's name written scripted across poison-stained lips. Hume weakness overtaking him again and she's flexing her knuckles, still feeling his inferno skin along her palm, Basch still pulling her from the scene.

His final breaths still carry on the breeze as they leave him to the earth.

The forest a looming wonder-world of shadow, her pretty bird-songs covering up the truth of a young man's last moments, standing over their shoulder. Fran hears raised voices beating riot against her ears, hears Basch bless a lost soul before his footfalls echo away.

Penelo is too bright for their word of rebellion and resistance, her concerns for Vaan carrying her to the edge of Ivalice, right now, her tiny ghost hands pressing little fingertip kisses across the bare skin of his chest, she's pleading, her voice hoarse with the efforts of false conviction, choked tearless sobs of _'Please Vaan. Please._' And he is struggling, as he always has, as he always will, Reks' tale relived in vibrant colour before his eyes. He's shrugging his shoulders, spreading his arms out wide in invitation, in surrender to war, yelling, '_what more can you take from me?_' His voice barely audible above of the sounds of civilisation at battle.

He's yelling, '_Fran, Where is he?_' and she's hearing, '_It's your fault. Everything_'. Stress tearing his vocal chords apart, the sunlight highlighting the darkened shadows beneath his eyes. No bitter smile will shield this storm. Tears glittering crystal along his eyelashes, because he was going to save the world, to save his friends and here another slips through his fingers. '_What have you done?_' emphasised by his trembling fingers in his hair. Everything is 'why?' for this boy, he neglects, 'why not?'

It is hours later before Vaan drifts into a teenage defence of petty words, and she humours him, because he is not unlike Balthier. He stares her down with bruise-framed eyes, his mouth a twisted line, spitting '_It could have been worse. **I** could have been his best friend_'. As if such a title granted her permission to even begin comparing their losses.

She stands, a sweep of elegance, and Penelo already has apologies perched on the edge of her tongue.

The Viera smiles, a bittersweet gentle curve of lip, because she is made for neither strength of emotion nor strength of expression. Her inappropriate behaviour captivating the young orphan boy's attentions, stealing him away from his inner rage if only briefly. Tonight the bonds she shared with her partner were broken, but Vaan, she cannot overlook the value of what such a series of unfortunate events have damaged in him.

'_It could have been worse,_' she thinks, agreeing, misty eyes settling on the platinum coloured desert boy. Because all of their stolen treasures, glittering gems, fistfuls of gil, none of it could measure up to Vaan's internal injury.

It _could_ have been worse. _She_ could have been the one to fall in love with him.


End file.
